Railroad Maps

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation has available a guide depicting rail options in Wisconsin: "Getting Around Wisconsin Without A Car: A Public Transportation Guide" Each railroad is represented with a different color or line symbol, depending on whether the rail has Amtrak stations, is out of service, has corridors owned by the state, or is for recreational use.

The Wisconsin Society of Land Surveyors maintains a list of railroad companies and an associated mapping contact.

For information regarding scanned historical railroad data, please contact:

James Baker
W5466 Windmill Ridge Rd.
New Glarus, WI 53574
(608) 214-1848

The USGS's 7.5 minute quadrangle series maps of Wisconsin can also be used as a reference for the state's railroad network, especially at the local scale. These maps are published at the 1:24,000-scale and show names of railroads, single and multiple tracks, old R.R. grades, spurs, R.R. yards, and R.R. bridges. Some of the railroad line names are out of date and some of the routes have been abandoned. These revisions are periodically made as the USGS updates the series.

Many commercially produced road atlases also show the route of Wisconsin's railroads. An example is the Wisconsin Atlas & Gazetteer, published by the DeLorme Mapping Company. It shows railroad routes and the state's road network at a scale of 1:150,000. These maps include railroad names and the location of single and multiple tracks, although spurs and urban area routes are omitted. This atlas and others are available at many bookstores and at other retail stores and filling stations.